The pamphlet by CPI Maoists that was confiscated by the police in Bastar.

For the first time in three decades, the judiciary has been targeted by the Maoists in Bastar. The Maoists have been issuing warnings to politicians and the police but this time they have warned the judges. Mayank Srivastava, SP Bastar, tells TEHELKA that pamphlets with the warnings were found on the passenger train running from Kurandul toVishakhapatnam. On Wednesday morning some pamphlets were also found along the railway tracks at Bodenar village, between Kaklur and Kavadgaon railway stations, under the Kodenar police station, Bastar. These pamphlets were seen by the keyman while inspecting the tracks in the morning, he later reported this at the railway station. The pamphlets were confiscated by the RPF and given to the police. Four pamphlets were also stuck inside the train. These pamphlets released by the CPI (Maoists) calls for the celebration of adhikar saptah (rights week) for all political prisoners from 23 to 29 March. The pamphlets said that the people’s court was warning the anti people judges. The Maoists in jails should be declared as political prisoners and released unconditionally. It warned that adivasis and revolutionaries should not be given harsh punishments on the basis of false and police testimony. It also warned the jail authorities from mistreating the prisoners.

In a suspected case of ragging, a first-year student of a private engineering college was allegedly assaulted and abandoned at a Bilaspur park in an unconscious state on Tuesday.
The park is just a stone’s throw away from Gurgaon College of Engineering, where the victim is pursuing
his mechanical engineering course.

According to Tularam Gautam’s relatives, his seniors assaulted and forced him to consume liquor. The 20-year-old is undergoing treatment at a private hospital in Gurgaon. He is a resident of Vijay Enclave in Delhi.

However, the college management dismissed the claims of the family. Dr Yateendra Tiwari, director of the college, said, “We have formed an inquiry committee to probe the matter. Ragging is not possible during exams.”

Pradeep Singh, a relative of the victim, said, “A group of senior students forced Gautam to consume liquor. There are injury marks all over his body. The incident took place during lunch break after the exam was over. It must be the handiwork of the seniors as there was no outsider on the campus.” The victim’s relatives claimed that his mobile phone and wallet were also missing.

Rahul Sharma, DCP (south), said, “Although the victim has regained consciousness, we are yet to record his statement.”

The incident occurred at Pahadigaon village in Maihar tehsil on March 15, and a complaint was filed on Sunday night.

Police said the victim had married a Muslim youth four months ago. She was living alone for the past one month after her husband was arrested and sent to jail in connection with a theft case.

Three accused-Neeraj Puri, 23, Rinku Chaurasia, 27, and Naseer Khan,30, reportedly went to her house on March 15 and promised her that they would get her husband out on bail.

As they were her husband’s friends, she allowed them in and offered tea. As soon as she went inside the kitchen, one of the accused locked the door from inside. Two of them overpowered her and gagged her mouth and another tore her clothes. The three raped her taking turns and also threatened her with dire consequences before leaving the house, said police.

She told her husband after he got out on bail on Sunday. Subsequently, the two went to the Maihar police station and lodged a complaint against the accused.

The victim was sent for medical examination. Police conducted raids and arrested all three of them under Section 376 (2g)(gang rape), 506 (criminal intimidation), and 3/2/5 of the SC/ST Act.

CHANDIGARH: The Punjab and Haryana high court on Monday ordered immediate transfer of seven policemen, who were caught on camera thrashing a dalit Sikh woman and her father publically in Tarn Taran earlier this month.

The HC ordered authorities to provide security to the woman, who had moved the court seeking protection and action against the cops as they had allegedly threatened her with dire consequences if she proceeded with the case.

The court said IGP (Amritsar range) should appear before it on Tuesday if its order was not implemented. It observed the police had acted in a barbaric manner and were now making the life of the woman and her family miserable. “Police officers cannot be permitted to behave in this manner,” the court said.

Justice Ranjit Singh, who heard the plea, said the woman and her father had told him that they have some recordings indicating the pressure on the family to withdraw the case. “Once the SC has taken note of the incident, this action by the police amounts to interference in the cause of justice and cannot be permitted.”

The court took note of the woman’s claim that Tarn Taran SSP had offered her Rs 4-5 lakh to abandon her pursuit for justice. It asked Amritsar IGP to ensure that the SSP or any police officer does not pressurize the petitioners.

The woman has sought an independent inquiry into the case in a time-bound manner and security cover from Haryana or central police forces while apprehending danger to her life.

The case will come up for hearing on Tuesday when the Punjab police have been asked to file its reply.

The Punjab police had not taken any action against the seven or filed an FIR against them despite the Supreme Court censure over the “inhuman act”. In fact, Punjab DGP Sumedh Singh Saini defended his men saying they had attacked the woman following “ample provocation” two days after the assault on March 5.

In this photograph taken on July 31, 2007, Indian Bollywood actor Sanjay Dutt (L) is frisked by a policeman as he arrives for sentencing at the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) – TADA court in Mumbai. AFP PHOTO/Sajjad HUSSAIN/FILES

NEW DELHI: India‘s top court upheld the death penalty on Thursday for a mastermind of the country’s deadliest series of attacks and ruled a Bollywood star who bought weapons from the bombers must return to jail.

Yakub Memon, brother of the alleged main plotter and fugitive Tiger Memon, was the only one of 11 convicts to see his death sentence upheld by the Supreme Court for his role in the 1993 blasts which killed 257 people in Mumbai.

The judges also handed down a five-year term for the actor Sanjay Dutt for possessing illegal weapons bought from gangsters accused of orchestrating the bombings. Dutt has already served 18 months but is currently out on bail.

“They were the architects of the blasts,” Sathashivam, one of two judges presiding over the case, said.

The remaining convicts who had appealed against the death penalty saw their sentences commuted to life imprisonment.

The attacks on March 12, 1993, were believed to have been staged by Mumbai’s Muslim-dominated underworld in retaliation for anti-Muslim violence that left more than 1,000 dead in the city a few months earlier.

Yakub, an accountant by profession, his brothers Essa and Yusuf and sister-in-law Rubina were all convicted for their involvement in the serial blasts at 13 different locations.

The Bombay Stock Exchange, the offices of the national carrier Air India and the luxury Sea Rock hotel were among the targets.

Tiger Memon and Dawood Ibrahim, the other alleged masterminds of the attacks, have been on the run since 1993. Indian investigators say they were helped by Pakistan’s intelligence service, a charge denied by Islamabad.

Executions are only carried out for “the rarest of rare” cases in India but President Pranab Mukherjee has rejected a number of mercy pleas in the last few months, ending an unofficial eight-year moratorium.

A Kashmiri separatist convicted of involvement in a deadly 2001 attack on the Indian parliament was executed in New Delhi last month while the lone surviving gunman from the deadly 2008 Mumbai attacks was hanged last November.

Dutt, who was appealing against an original six-year term, spent 18 months behind bars before being bailed in 2007.

During a police raid, investigators uncovered a pistol and an AK-56 rifle which were part of the consignment of weapons and explosives said to have been brought to India from Pakistan and then used in the attacks.

Dutt, a one-time heavy drug user who has a reputation as one of Bollywood’s bad boys, had admitted buying the weapons but insisted they were only meant to protect his family.

The 53-year-old was not in court while his sister Priya Dutt, who is a member of parliament, looked visibly upset when the verdict was pronounced.

His lawyer Satish Maneshinde said he has spoken to the actor who has four weeks to hand himself in to the authorities.

“He has accepted the judgement,” said Maneshinde. “He will go through the verdict and will consider all the legal recourses available to him”.

The actor shot to fame in the mid-1980s in a string of action movies in which he performed his own stunts, earning him the nickname “Deadly Dutt”.

He is best known for playing a mobster with a heart of gold in the popular “Munnabhai” series.

Dutt’s first wife died of cancer while his second marriage, to a model, ended in divorce. He married for a third time in 2008.

A social republic like India cannot have water in private ownership and deny the citizens their right to quality water at affordable prices, said Justice Rajinder Sachar here on Tuesday, criticising the Delhi Government’s move to undertake three public-private partnership projects in the city.

Speaking at a conference on “Water Privatisation: Learning from India and International Experiences”, Justice Sachar said: “There is nothing above the Constitution. The Preamble says India is a secular, socialist, Republic…and handing over ownership of water to private companies is cheating the Constitution.”

He said the Government is obliged to adhere to the Supreme Court guidelines that have specified several times that air, water, sea and forests cannot be under private ownership. He disapproved of the Delhi Government’s move to rope in private companies for doing work that is the State’s responsibility.

Rebutting the Government claims that PPP will usher in changes in the water sector, Jammu Anand, an employee of the Nagpur Municipal Corporation Employees Union, cited the example of Nagpur where privatisation and the promise of 24×7 water supply has not shown any positive results.

“Before the privatisation exercise the Government claimed there was 50 per cent non-revenue water and 45 per cent leakages. They said the Government is in a financial crisis, not capable of arresting these faults and the municipality does not have the political will to do so. Today the leakages are still 30 per cent and no one knows why,” he said.

Mr. Anand said the Government shrewdly chose a place for the pilot project in Nagpur that did not have a major water problem.

Also speaking at the conference organised by the Citizens’ Front for Water Democracy, Focus on the Global South, PEACE, Delhi Journalists’ Association, WS&SDEU and Water Workers’ Alliance, Himanshu Thakkar of the South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers & People said the move to have a Water Resources Regulatory Authority that will among other things serve to decide the tariffs needs to be opposed as well. PPPs are being encouraged, he said, adding the only state in India which has a water regulatory authority is Maharashtra, where it has been a failure.

“Post-Independence the biggest water scam is in Maharashtra where Rs.75,000 crore has been shown spent on irrigation in the past 10 years but in reality not one hectare has been irrigated,” he said.

S. A. Naqvi of the Citizens’ Front for Water Democracy said despite evidence of privatisation not being a success globally, India is keen on moving ahead with privatisation in almost all sectors from energy to water. “Privatisation is a failed model, yet India is pushing forwards towards it. The Government, it seems, is distancing itself from its responsibility.”

Indian authorities must immediately release Irom Sharmila Chanu – a protester on a prolonged hunger-strike – and drop all charges against her, Amnesty International said today.

Irom Sharmila has been on an indefinite fast since November 2000, protesting against the imposition of the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, 1958 (AFSPA) in the state of Manipur. She was arrested shortly after she began her hunger strike and charged with attempting to commit suicide – a criminal offence under Indian law.

Irom Sharmila, was released on 12 March 2013 by the Chief Judicial Magistrate Court of Imphal East only to be re-arrested on 14 March and remanded again to judicial custody till 26 March. On 4 March, a Delhi court had also charged Irom Sharmila with attempting to commit suicide in October 2006, when she staged a protest in Delhi for two days.

Irom Sharmila has never been brought to trial, but as her alleged offence is punishable by a term of one year only, she has been regularly released upon the completion of such period in judicial custody, only to be re-arrested shortly thereafter as she continues her fast.

Sharmila has remained in judicial custody in Manipur over the past twelve years. She is currently held at the security ward of the Jawaharlal Nehru hospital in Imphal, the capital of Manipur, where she is force-fed a diet of liquids through her nose.

Sharmila has pleaded not guilty to the charges of attempting to commit suicide, and has said she is holding a non-violent protest.

“I do not want to commit suicide. Mine is only a non-violent protest. It is my demand to live as a human being,” Sharmila reportedly told the Delhi court on Monday. “I love life. I do not want to take my life but I want justice and peace.”

Although attempting to commit suicide is a bailable offence in India, Sharmila has refused to sign the bail-bonds, maintaining that she had not committed any offence, and has instead called for the criminal charges against her to be dropped.

Irom Sharmila has undertaken her hunger strike as a form of protest against the AFSPA. The British Medical Association, in a briefing to the World Medical Association, has clarified that “A hunger strike is not equivalent to suicide. Individuals who embark on hunger strikes aim to achieve goals important to them but generally hope and intend to survive.” This position is embodied by the World Medical Association in its Malta Declaration on Hunger Strikers.

Amnesty International has also previously called upon the Government to repeal the AFSPA, which provides impunity for perpetrators of serious human rights violations, including extrajudicial executions, enforced disappearances, rape and torture.

Background

Irom Sharmila Chanu began her hunger strike after the killing of 10 Manipuris by the Assam Rifles (a paramilitary force) in Malom, Imphal in November 2000. She demanded the removal of the AFSPA from Manipur. The AFSPA provides for soldiers who are operating in government designated ‘disturbed areas’ the authority to use lethal force against any person contravening laws or orders “prohibiting the assembly of five or more persons” as well as to destroy property, enter and search premises without warrant and arrest in the interest of ‘maintenance of public order’. Soldiers are also protected from any legal proceedings unless such action is sanctioned by the central government.

Repeal of the law has also been recommended by a number of national bodies including the Second Administrative Reforms Commission, Jeevan Reddy Commission and the Prime Minister’s Working Group on Confidence-Building Measures in Jammu and Kashmir. The Justice Verma Committee on Amendments to Criminal Law said in January 2013 that the AFSPA legitimized impunity for sexual violence, and recommended an urgent review of the law.

The Supreme Court today listed afresh for hearing a plea seeking abolition of recruitment in the Army on the basis of caste, region and religion claiming it was violative of the Constitutional right to equal opportunity in public employment.

“Have you (petitioner) supplied the copy of the petition to

the Solicitor General (SG). Give the copy to the SG. List on April 10,” a bench of justices K S Radhakrishnan and Dipak Misra said.

The court was hearing the plea of I S Yadav, a doctor hailing from Rewari in Haryana, seeking abolition of Indian Army‘s recruitment criteria for its duty soldiers on the grounds of caste, region and religion.

Yadav, in his plea, submitted that unlike Air Force and Navy, there is “discriminatory classification” for recruitment on caste/religion/region basis and submitted that a national policy of recruitment be formed in the Army.

“At recruitment stage there cannot be caste-cum- religion-cum-region based classification. There cannot be specific recruitment on the basis of caste, region and religion to various regiments like Maratha Regiment, Rajasthan Rifles, Dogra Regiment, Jat Regiment, etc. This classification of the army is a British legacy and is not sanctioned by any law made by Parliament,” he said.

“In Indian Air Force and in Indian Navy there is no such discriminatory classification of Squadrons/Fleets based on caste/religion/region and hence recruitment in Indian Air Force and Indian Navy is on all-India, all-class basis. Yet in Army alone there are caste/religion/region based regiments,” the petitioner said

Numerous countries across the world have abolished the death sentence as a form of punishment. However India, claimed repeatedly by its rulers to be a democratic country still retains this inhuman practice and the bloody eye-for-an-eye code of justice. Capital punishment is unacceptable with democratic principles and hence we believe that it should be abolished in India. With this demand about forty political prisoners of the NagpurCentral prison, including ten women will observe a one day token Hunger strike on 23rd March 2013.

Bhagat Singh, Sukhdeo and Rajguru, who fought against British Imperialism and underwent a prolonged struggle against the colonial prison administration for recognition of their political prisoner status were hanged to death by the British. As part of this struggle, political prisoners across the country observe the day of their martyrdom, 23rd March each year as ‘Political Prisoners Day’.

On this occasion, the government never fails to sponsor full page advertisements in the daily papers, whilst killing his thoughts and opinions. The government colluding with Imperialism and making numerous agreements for the sale of the nation, is like the British brutally crushing those who resist- the revolutionaries, democrats and patriots. Those who believe in freedom, equality and liberty are branded as anti-nationals and some are sentenced to death by hanging to make an example.

Through this press note, we call that all those imprisoned for their rights, justice, freedom, equality and liberty be recognized as political prisoners and be unconditionally released.

The International Women’s Health Coalition and our amazing partners from around the world came out in force to the UN for the negotiations. Our agenda was clear: push governments to commit to concrete strategies to empower women and girls and end gender-based violence. We would not be silenced. We would not be denied our rights.

We met with instant opposition from conservative governments. Countries such as Iran, Russia, Egypt, and Syria joined with the Vatican to use culture and religion as arguments to deny women their rights. But there can be no excuse to justify violence against women. Consensus was finally reached to loud applause from supportive governments such as the U.S., South Africa, Uruguay, Argentina, Turkey, the Philippines, Norway, Denmark, and even the small island of Tonga! As the document was adopted, hundreds of women’s rights activists streamed into the negotiating room to join in the cheers.

The Commission has released 17 pages of agreed conclusions, which build on the global momentum of the past 20 years and represent an important step forward for women and girls. For the first time at the UN, governments reached consensus that survivors of rape are entitled to emergency contraception to prevent unwanted pregnancy, and to timely and respectful forensic exams to support prosecution. They called for an end to child marriages. They agreed women’s right to control their sexuality is essential to preventing further violence. And they recognized the role that evidence-based sexuality education can play in reducing the harmful gender stereotypes that lead to violence.

Once again, we women have shown we’re an irresistible force. But our work is far from over. Now we must be vigilant to ensure that the agreements made at the UN are put into practice in local communities worldwide. For that to happen, women’s groups must be supported to hold their own leaders to account.